When documentary filmmakers, Yvonne Drebert and Zach Melnick, set out to survey a lakebed in Lake Huron, they weren’t expecting to find the remains of a ship that mysteriously vanished 128 years ago.
And yet, that’s exactly what they discovered.
The two filmmakers were collecting footage for their upcoming documentary, All Too Clear, about the ecological repercussions of the invasive freshwater mussels for which the Great Lakes have become infamous.
Drebert and Melnick sent out an underwater vehicle equipped with an ultra-low-light high resolution camera system and received front row seats to the shocking discovery waiting for them. Expecting to find a quote “a pile of rocks,” the filmmakers instead beheld what remains of a ship known as the Africa, which disappeared during its voyage from Ohio to Ontario in 1895.
During a typical midwestern snowstorm, the Africa was separated from its sister-carrier, The Severn, which ran aground. Meanwhile, the Africa was lost to the lake, and its 11 crew members were never found. Both ships were carrying coal at the time.
The pair couldn’t believe their eyes. They’d been driven to that particular region of Lake Huron due quote “an anomaly”found on sonar readings. Expecting to find apt footage for their documentary on mussels, the filmmakers instead found the shipwrecked Africa quote “looming up from the depths”.
And what did Drebert and Melnick have to thank for this 130-year old, now solved, mystery?
The invasive quagga mussels coating every inch of the ship’s surface.
Needless to say, Drebert and Melnik found more than they bargained for, and in the process, answered questions about The Africa’s bizarre disappearance over a century ago.
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